October 26, 2015

 

 

Arrivederci Roma

Good-bye to Rome for now.  Here’s the deal, dear Blog.  When planning this trip we said sometime we should figure out how to get to Greece.  Maybe not on this trip, but wait.  Let’s check airfare from Rome to Athens, and at $120 apiece round trip we decided we would never have a better chance.  I mean who wouldn’t fly to Athens for 120 bucks round trip.  So that’s the plan for today.

We have a 6:00 AM wake up this morning that we blow off for an extra 20 minutes.  When we appear in the breakfast area at 8:00 we’re packed and ready to go.  Frederico has a nice little spread of fruits, cereals and pastries but it is certainly not B&B quality.  B&Snack maybe.  Anyway we grab coffee and some nourishment and we’re in the van to the airport by 8:45.

Rome is a big airport but not difficult to navigate and security is a breeze.  The checked baggage belt has broken down so there is a guy from Aegean Airlines hauling suitcases on a cart which somehow increases confidence that they will eventually arrive.  We’re way ahead of schedule for our 11:00 AM flight which gives John some kindle time and Mary some browsing time.

We snared exit row seats for our flight which is good—the plane is packed.  We don’t know much about Aegean but everything seems alright.  They even feed us a little pasta thing with a dry roll and a packaged lemon pie.  Sort of the same quality as breakfast.  We fly down the coast of Italy before we get into high clouds and lose our visibility.  Flying in to Athens is beautiful.  The skies are now clear and as we approach Athens from the water we get a great view of the thousands of little islands off the coast.  Bump-bump and we’re in Greece.

The airport is only 14 years old and feels pretty slick to us.  We grab our bags and when we exit to the arrivals area our driver Kostas is waiting for us.  This private driver thing is getting a little over the top, but Kostas is really just a taxi driver who works for an on-line service that costs about an extra five euros so you don’t have to negotiate with Greek cabbies.  He is a chatty guy with good English so between the airport and center city we learn about the Greek economy, Greek geography, German efficiency, the Greek higher education system, his kids and Greek personality disorder.  You don’t get that negotiating with a cabbie in a foreign language.  His key point was that the airport was built by a German firm for the 2004 Olympics on budget and on time.  The road to the airport was built by a Greek company, three years late and triple the budget.  That, he says, defines the current Greece problems.

We’re at the Hotel Attalos in the middle of everything in Athens.  The hotel was recommended on line and by friends we know who are Greekophiles.  After we settle in we go up to the rooftop bar and get our first view of the Parthenon on the hill above us.  As a lady said to us later, “Is that what I think it is?”

We take it to the street and wander around our neighborhood, into Monastiraki Square and up the Acropolis hill into the Plaka neighborhood.  We thought Naples was an assault on the senses but this is even more, that is, better or worse depending on your point of view.  Right now it feels pretty exciting to us.  As the old saying goes, you can’t swing a cat by the tail without bouncing off some sort of ancient archaeological site.  It is like Rome in that regard. The streets are lined with graffiti, restaurants and little shops selling whatever you want to buy.  And. It is noisy.  Car horns, shouting café owners, people arguing (maybe), kids hollering and overall traffic and city sounds.

Our first couple hours of wandering give us a preliminary overview of the neighborhood which we always consider to be a good first step in a new place.  We have a little trouble with street names that sound like fraternities—take a left at Tau-Kappa-Epsilon--but there is fine print underneath in letters we sort of recognize.  Learning curve.

Our front desk guy recommends a restaurant a few blocks away, Taverna Tou Psiri, which we locate after a couple false starts in this little warren of tiny angled streets.  The Psiri neighborhood looks like a disaster but we understand it is up and coming and THE place to hang out for all the hipsters.  We’re early for dinner (7:30) which gets us an outside sidewalk table.  Our waiter is very patient with us and walks us to the hot table inside and explains the dishes on display and available for dinner tonight.  There are other things on the menu but these are the stars of the show.  Mary picks out a Mousakka and a plate of some sort of big baked beans in a spicy sauce while John opts for the roast chicken and potatoes with a lemon/herb sauce.  We start with a ½ liter of red wine that is served in a little metal pitcher with two small glasses and tell the waiter to serve the dinner however he thinks it should be served.  We find out that means the beans are a first course.  When in Athens…..

The food is good, the people watching is great and there are a couple guys playing traditional music on a patio a couple doors down.  It is yet another magical night for us in a brand new place.  We go around one block out of the way and decide that is as adventurous as we need to be tonight.  Hotel Attalos, here we come.

What did we learn today?  Athens is a fascinating mix of ancient classical and modern scruffy.